** New 4K restoration! **

With Legend of the Mountain, legendary filmmaker King Hu moved away from the wuxia genre that had defined his most well known masterpieces, such as Dragon Inn and A Touch of Zen. The film is an extrapolation of the mysticism of the final portion of that latter film, taking place in a world populated by a vast number of possible spirits, ghosts and demons. It follows a Song dynasty scholar (Shih Chun) who ventures to an old fort in order to copy a powerful Buddhist sutra, only to come across a host of mysterious individuals played by such venerated actors as Hsu Feng and Sylvia Chang, including a mysterious priest, a bar owner’s daughter, a counselor to a deceased general, and a mute man. Beautifully and vividly restored for the first time in the full three-hour cut, it moves at a meditative and dynamic pace, methodically introducing concepts and characters well into the film. Featuring a multitude of shifting allegiances, murky motivations, betrayals, and romances, all united under the stunning power of Hu’s direction, it is a staggering, hallucinatory, beautiful experience.